I have recently heard from a fishery in Norfolk who I have been supplying since I first started BP Milling, and the stock have been given a new lease of life with a little supplementary feeding.

Chris and Jane invested in their new fishery about 5 years ago, the resident fish were ancient and dropping in weight, looking rather sorry for themselves. Chris and Jane have plenty of experience in running a fishery as well as a background in livestock farming, so when we suggested supplementary feeding the lakes, it made perfect sense to them.

Chris initially commented on how feeding a low stock carp fishery (which is tricky fishing at the best of times) seemed like a waste of feed, but he persisted and the changes were quick to materialise.

Heres what Chris sent me this morning:

"Hi Ben,Thought you might like this one. It was 20.12 in March 2016, then 28.02 in Oct 2017 and is now 31.02.They have certainly packing it on.I now have had 4 carp over 30lbs caught in the last few weeks.Feed paying dividends. Chris."

Our most popular pellet size is now back in production after a long wait for the new parts to arrive.

I have been stressing all summer about getting the 12mm parts to fit the new machine, they had to be specially made abroad, so I though the chances of them fitting my machine might be slim! But the parts finally arrived some 6 months after I initially placed the order! After a day tinkering and fabricating new tools, I eventually produced my first batch of 12mm pellets!

At first the pellets were coming out extremely hot and hard, and I couldnt get the machine to run up to speed for all the power it was pulling to run the 12mm. After a few hours running in the new parts I soon had the machine running at capacity, and I'm now confident enough to re-launch the 12mm back on the website. You will find the 12mm option available again in the drop down tabs.

The breakdown time of the 12mm pellet now seems to be much much longer, with 10mm of pellet still staying strong after an hour in water.

Local fishery 'Woodside' have been in touch after collecting there 2nd tonne this year..."These pellets have been such a help with transforming fish. So pleased with the results. Could not recommend them enough. They also come with great service. Thanks Ben."

It is with great pleasure that I can finally announce the completion of the new fish feed mill at BP Milling. The project vastly over-ran the schedule as well as going frightfully over budget, so It’s a huge relief to finally have the new machinery and pelleting processes running at last.

Frustratingly, I can only make 6mm pellets until the 12mm parts arrive later in September. There will be on-going work through the winter to further improve the pellet quality further.

After all the hard work gone into the new plant, I would love to hear your feedback or any other requests for pellet sizes would also be helpful.

Aquafeed magazine is a monthly paper all about the news in the fish feed industry, innovations and developments of ingredients etc. Well a few weeks ago I was asked by the editorial team to write about the feeds that I make and the market that the feeds are designed for. But when this months issue arrived yesterday I was hoping my article might have been published, so I was a little suprised to find myself on the front cover of the magazine! I will copy the article into this blog post below:

Living the dream spreading manure around the margins of some ponds this weekend, this will leak nutrient into the pond over time and kick start a thriving food chain when the weather warms up. Fertilising the sources of free nutrition!

However, the art of fishery management isn’t as straight forward as that...I wouldn’t fertilise a pond thats likely to become weedy in the summer or the nutrient will just feed the weed! Neither would I use manure on a silty pond, instead apply chalk to encourage the organic breakdown of the silt which will release nitrate and have the same effect as manure, but chalk which will also neutralise ph and combat the build up of acidic silt layers.

The perfect candidate for manure are the pools that i treated on the weekend, they have only served 1 growing season, so they still have a clean clay substrate which is not as fertile as the more mature pools.

Choose your poo carefully...💩

We use horse manure rather than cattle. Slurry storage on farms are also a dumping ground for feed waste, and silage effluent has shown to be up to 200 times more toxic that untreated sewage!

Spread around the margins rather than directly into the water. Its also important to apply in the winter, applying manure in the warmer months is likely to trigger an aggressive algal bloom and have a sudden impact the BOD so you need to be sensible with it, but like fertilising a field, it does make a difference... and its FREE!

Just returned from a trip to france with AE Fisheries where we visited a number of clients old and new to carry out stock management services.

The week started near Metz at 'Chalet Lake', when we were arrived we were pleasantly surprised to find the lake drained down to 4-5 ft, which made our job of removing silvers much easier.

Although we had to work hard in the silt to get the net to fish effectively, we managed to crowd up 245 carp between 10lb and 55lb! So sorting that lot was a lengthy process before we could begin removing the thousands of silvers. The carp were held in a pen whilst we had another sweep, which resulted in a further haul of over 140 carp and more rudd removed!

The next few days were spent on consultancy visits to new fisheries before dropping down to Lemoges to new clients at Forest View Fishery.

We had heard that a 80lb carp was landed in the summer, which made this job a little exciting! Again, it was refreshing to find the fishery half drained so we were confident we could do a good job. After hours of pulling we landed a net full of huge carp, stacks of 40lb carp, just as many 50lb fish and a good number of 60lb fish too! If that wasn't enough, we then uncovered a colossal fish, which could only be the 80, the scales confirmed at over 86lb! An immense stamp of fish all in fantastic condition for the deserving new owners!

The homeward leg saw us drop into a couple more drained fisheries to remove silvers and unwanted fish to swing the growth in the favour of the carp.

Keep an eye on our facebook page for the video footage of the trip. Or watch the trailer here...